Day 5 from Lorca to Los Arcos, almost 30 kilometers

Our alarms went off at 5:00 AM.  Our room in the Albergue only had 4 beds and only 3 were taken, so for once, we almost woke nobody.  Almost.

We hit the road at 5:30 wearing headlamps, which this time we really needed.  On the way down the stairs, Tina slipped and got pretty bruised up.  Remind me why we're getting up so early?

The objective for today is to get to the town of Los Arcos.  Since we finished yesterday prematurely, it's a full day from the book plus another eight and a half kilometers.  The total could be over 30 km for the day.

We left in the dark and the first two towns we went through, everyone was asleep.  Read that: no coffee.  Grrrrrrr.  So why were we leaving so early?  Because we knew it would be a long slog and the last 8 km were going to have no shade.  We wanted to get to Los Arcos before the day became unbearable.

Let's talk about Fitbits.  We've both got them.  We've been averaging over 40,000 steps a day.  We hit 10,000 today by 7:00.  Are you impressed?

Early this morning, the sign said we'd passed 100 kilometers.

Tina, in wine country, smiling, before my morning coffee.

We got coffee in the town of Estella.  As we sat at a sidewalk table, a bunch of our friends from the Camino showed up and did the same.  We finished up and crossed the river to get back on the Camino and ran into three more people that we were having wine with last night.  That's what it's like.

The places we walked through were stunning.  The wonderful thing about Europe is how people could live in a place for a few thousand years and not cover it with suburbs.  People live in the towns and the countryside is largely unchanged.

Does this picture even begin to convey the stunning views as you walk through the countryside?

At one point, I blurted out that all the place was missing was yellow bricks!

We decided to pick up litter as our way of being good pilgrims, so we got a plastic bag from another one of the peregrinos, Gregor from Berlin.  Somebody ahead of us must have had a head cold because it seemed that we picked up a few dozen wet kleenexes.  It was gross.  We stopped in the town of Azqueta so I could dump the trash, wash my hands repeatedly and have a cold Coke.

I don't drink soda in real life, but in the heat of the Camino, something cold, sweet and fizzy really hits the spot!

After Azqueta, this day's route has a whole lot of nothing.  Fortunately for us, it was breezy and partly cloudy stopping the day from heating up until the afternoon.  Walking was a joy, and the views were amazing.

There's a famous pop up stand on this route run by some guy named Eduardo.  It's a god send.  In the middle of no where, there are covered tables, cold drinks, and rock & roll.  Of course we stopped.

This is what an oasis looks like.

The last 6.5 kilometers went by quickly.  We were in a zone, but the closer we got to the destination, the lighter the winds became, the hotter things got.  By the time we arrived in Los Arcos, we were spent.

We decided to let the Camino decide where we were going to stay, so we didn't make a reservation at an albergue.  We walked to our first choice, and it was closed for two days for personal reasons.  I thought the Camino always provided!  We walked to our second choice and got a room for two with a semi private bathroom and a patio.  Damn!

When I took my shower, I realized that this bathroom was the largest private space that I'd been in since we started five days ago.  Giving up privilege and patterns is a big part of this.

After showering, we walked back to the center of town and ate lunch in the cafe where Jost calls out to grumpy Tom in the movie "The Way".  It's the place where the waiter explains to Martin Sheen the difference between Pinxtos and Tapas.  The food was great and after lunch, we were joined for wine by our friend, Phil Martin, from Ireland and Karin (Karma) from Sweden.  It was great, but all of us were just bushed from the day's hike.

Where we had lunch.  You can see Phil sitting at our table if you look closely.

On the way back from lunch, I took some photos of the town's 16th Century church.  It was incredible.  Judge for yourself.

This shrinking town has a population of 1,200.  The Camino keeps it alive as far as I can see.

The church even has a cloister.

Tomorrow, we're walking to Logroño, the provincial capital of the wine region Rioja.  Thursday nights are half priced tapas on a certain well known street, so all of the folks we've been walking with have made a date.  We'll let you know how it turns out!